Legal Blog

Police are arresting large numbers of Chinese nationals in raids on illegal marijuana operations in California, Colorado and other states, raising questions about who is financing these grow houses and recruiting the immigrants to tend them, McClatchy Newspapers reports. One recent indictment charges that money...

More than a month after Hurricane Maria wrecked the island, Puerto Rico’s overwhelmed police force of 13,000 officers is struggling to contain crime, just as before, but now with longer shifts, against emboldened criminals and on streets cloaked in darkness, the Miami Herald reports. “It’s...

President Trump has personally interviewed at least two potential candidates for U.S. attorney positions in New York, a move that critics say raises questions about whether they can be sufficiently independent from the president, reports Politico. Trump interviewed Geoffrey Berman of the law firm Greenberg...

A donation of $250 to the campaign of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance raises questions about how his office vets contributions for potential conflicts of interest, CBS News reports. The donation came from a defense attorney on the day a key motion was filed in...

States that have some of the tightest laws regulating who can carry a concealed handgun have significantly lower rates of handgun homicides than states with more lax handgun permitting laws, says a new study from Boston University published in the American Journal of Public Health,...

A study by the Prison Policy Initiative and the ACLU’s Campaign for Smart Justice provides a detailed analysis of women’s incarceration in the United States, highlighting in particular the role of wage disparity in high pretrial detention rates for women.
Since 2014, the Prison Policy Initiative...

President Trump erroneously linked a rise in recorded crime in the United Kingdom to the “spread of radical Islamic terror” in his latest outburst on Twitter, The Guardian reports. The president tweeted, “Just out report: ‘United Kingdom crime rises 13% annually amid spread of Radical...

A nationwide justice “storytelling” project has set up shop in Milwaukee this month, where it heard individuals formerly incarcerated at the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF), describe conditions ranging from poor ventilation and overcrowding to inadequate medical care, according to a report this week from...

President Trump overrode his own advisers when he promised to deliver an emergency declaration next week to combat the nation’s worsening opioid crisis, Politico reports. “That is a very, very big statement,” he said Monday. “It’s a very important step. … We’re going to be...

Ill health motivated John Dickinson to leave the federal convention a day early. Before departing, he instructed his friend and Delaware colleague, George Read, to affix his signature to the document. There are, therefore, 39 signatures to the document but only 38 men physically signed.
In...